Congress went on a spending orgy since 2019 adding $8.77 trillion to the national debt and dimwits blame the Fed for being unable to control inflation

 Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. Blame yourselves. You elected them.

 

The chief penalty is to be governed by someone worse if a man will not himself hold office and rule.

-- Plato, Republic, I, 346f.

Trump excels at the adulation, insatiable desires, convulsions and distractions

"He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles."

-- Plato's Republic, Book IX

It's always amusing to see what triggers CNBC liberals, in this case a Johnny Reb hat worn by US Senate hopeful Cindy-Hyde Smith

Appearances are everything to liberals, who are our time's cave dwellers of Plato's Republic, who have never seen a reenactment of a War Between The States battle, as I have right here in Yankee Michigan. Yes, we've had full blown Confederate armies here, the state which just witnessed a Democrat sweep of state offices in Election 2018.

A lousy gray hat from yesteryear triggers the headline (the blue Yankee hat goes unremarked):

Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith wore Confederate rebel hat in Facebook photo — 'Mississippi history at its best!'

David Frum is not a conservative

Here:

Ideas are not artifacts, especially the kind of collective ideas we know as ideologies. Conservatives in 1964 opposed civil-rights laws. Conservatives in 1974 opposed tax cuts unless paid for by spending cuts. Conservatives in 1984 opposed same-sex marriage. Conservatives in 1994 opposed trade protectionism. Conservatives in 2004 opposed people who equated the FBI and Soviet Union’s KGB. All those statements of conservative ideology have gone by the boards, and one could easily write a similar list of amended views for liberals.

Conservatism is what conservatives think, say, and do. As conservatives change—as much through the harsh fact of death and birth as by the fluctuations of opinion—so does what it means to be a conservative.

On the contray, conservatives believe in a transcendent moral order populated by eternal truths to which they seek to conform human affairs. Jews, for example, recognize these in the Decalogue, Platonists in the Ideas and Hindus in dharma. Infractions committed against the eternal truths do not change the truths, the infractions change us, sometimes for the better but more often for the worse.

Like the sophists, David Frum has chosen the worse, peddling his opinions in a world composed of mere opinion, as changeable as a pair of pants.

That's not conservatism.

So how does Charlie Sheen withdraw up to $10 million to pay blackmail and not get prosecuted and Speaker Hastert does?

I'm callin' phony on this story:

"Sheen said he's trusted the diagnosis with people he thought he could confide in, but has paid out upwards of $10 million to keep the illness a secret."

Robert Kaplan either steals from Plato, or is simply ignorant of him

Here in "The Loneliness of the Tyrant", where he discourses at length on the psychological predicament of many strongmen past and present, but never once mentions Socrates' famous meditation on the soul of the tyrannical man:

"No one should envy a tyrant. His existence is miserable."

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Is not his case utterly miserable? and does not the actual tyrant lead a worse life than he whose life you determined to be the worst? ... 

He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles: and surely the resemblance holds? ... 

Moreover, as we were saying before, he grows worse from having power: he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless, more impious, than he was at first; he is the purveyor and cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is that he is supremely miserable, and that he makes everybody else as miserable as himself.

-- Plato, Republic, Book 9

Self-Described Moderate Rep. Justin Amash To Receive Primary Challenge From Conservative

Grand Rapids businessman Brian Ellis is set to challenge Rep. Justin Amash in the Republican primary as a conservative because of Amash's idiosyncratically liberal voting record, as reported here:

Kevin Heine, chief strategist for iCaucus Michigan, said he's interested in hearing more of Ellis' platform. iCaucus is a Wyoming-based nonprofit that is "strategically allied" with the Tea Party, Heine said. "We saw this primary challenge coming because Congressman Amash's voting record is conspicuously sloppy on both military and veteran issues, as well as social issues," he said. "Neither of those play well in the 3rd District."

In April Rep. Amash famously described himself as a moderate in an interview with George Will when Amash was still flirting with the idea of running for Carl Levin's Senate seat:

He adds, “Because I do not fit neatly in the Republican box, some establishment Republicans and pundits think I am extreme,” but “I am a moderate” because “the point of the Constitution is to moderate the government.”

--------------------------------------------

This may well be a battle of the businessmen, DeVos and company vs. Chamber of Commerce types, not of conservatism vs. libertarianism per se. Both are what we used to call "shop and till" conservatives, hands familiar with the feel of coins but which fumble with the pages of Plato, the Bible and Shakespeare. Ellis is an accounting major and finance MBA who at least has a history in the real world of making a go of it and raising a family. Amash is an economics major and lawyer who went straight into politics and controversy, heir to a fortune made by his father, not by himself. As a representative he has taken as many courageous stands as he has controversial ones, but remains a mixed bag of predictable aloofness which is always at risk in elections where emotion, not reason, often carries the day. In a region where people think of old trees as members of their family, the advantage goes to the candidate who can tap into that sap. Ellis' entry from the right is a good opener.  

Plato's Gold/Silver Ratio was 12, Founding Fathers' 15. At this hour it is 59.7!

Socrates

Now answer this further question: you say that if one acquires more than the amount one has spent, it is gain?

Friend

I do not mean, when it is evil, but if one gets more gold or silver than one has spent.

Socrates

Now, I am just going to ask you about that. Tell me,  if one spends half a pound of gold and gets double that weight in silver, has one got gain or loss?

Friend

Loss, I presume, Socrates for one's gold is reduced to twice, instead of twelve times, the value of silver.

Socrates

But you see, one has got more; or is double not more than half?

Friend

Not in worth, the one being silver and the other gold.

-- Plato's Hipparchus 231cd

Barry Ritholtz Is Against The World Religion Of Gold

Barry Ritholtz here recently had some fun with the goldbugs, whom he ridicules as devotees of a "religious cult".

The piece is regrettably inflammatory. Doesn't he know he's writing off the whole world as a bunch of religious kooks in this temper tantrum? That's pretty much what ideologues do when reality won't cooperate with their theories, but surely he must know that sovereigns and central banks the world over continue to build their hoardes of gold year upon year, now approaching 32,000 tonnes and 20% of all the stuff ever pulled out of the ground. That's quite the foundation for the edifice of the worldwide church of gold.

In fact, many of the central banks in particular have been on a tear recently, acquiring the stuff in quantities not seen in 30 years. Evidently they are to a man possessed by the Oracle of Au (pronounced "Ow"). But try as they may to acquire new gold reserves, no one of them yet even comes close to the chief priest bowing and scraping before the barbarous relic, namely the USA, the number one holder of gold in reserve to the tune of 8,134 tonnes (not to be confused with tons). 

That even the USA with all its fiat money still considers this gold to be the most sublime of all currencies can be seen in its own gold issues. Gold Eagles, in one ounce sizes down to tenth ounce, are denominated from $50 down to $5. It says so right on the coins. (I understand if you don't believe me because you haven't seen one. They are expensive these days.) I myself haven't seen one of these things in my change at Walmart recently, or anywhere else, but theoretically you could. In various places around the country they are in fact found in Salvation Army kettles from time to time, usually around the time of a holiday formerly known as "Christmas".

There is a reason for what appears on a Gold Eagle: The US government has decreed that gold is money, and that the price of gold cannot fall. It has fixed the price at $42.22 per troy ounce since 1973, and it hasn't fallen since. The one ounce $50 Gold Eagle thus closely approximates this valuation, as it should if America wants to maintain its credibility as the leader of the free world and the spokesman for truth, justice and the, well, American way. The excess, in case you were wondering, is simply a small bonus in exchange for providing the world with both its security and its reserve currency, both of which are quite costly to the inhabitants of the land of the free.

Over our long history, the price of gold has indeed risen despite the best efforts of "manipulators" to stop it from doing so. For a long time the price of gold had been ruthlessly kept down at $20.67, from the War Between the States to FDR, but suddenly became $35 when the greatest Democrat ever saved us from the bad old ways. Not to be outdone, however, the great Republican Richard Nixon managed to make gold higher still, at $42.22, where it has stood ever since.

See, the price of gold hasn't ever fallen in America, it's only risen, just like Jesus. It's God's will. It is our manifest destiny.

That said, more people these days do need to come to accept the reality of this defacto gold standard to which our benevolent government all too secretly adheres. Younger generations of mockers actually have arisen among us who need to repent of their intemperate outbursts against gold and believe in the Gold Gospel once again. Instead of denying the reality of this kingdom of gold, which is really present here and now in the sacramental dollar, they need to wake up and consider the future possibilities of our great civilization and its gold religion.

Perhaps then there would be more public support for all these central bankers who print funny money to drive gold prices higher, especially for our own Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve who far excells all others at this. What he really needs most right now is more public encouragement to use that funny money like our competitors do in the world. Like them, we need to start augmenting our gold reserves once again using funny dollars to buy gold just as they are doing using, say, funny yuans. After all, this is actually a divinely sanctioned practice, what the Bible calls making use of "unrighteous mammon". You can look it up, it's right in there. Ben really needs to get on this right away. It should be a matter of his monetary policy to drive up the price of gold by hoarding it. Who knows, maybe we can even get our tonnage back up where it used to be after WWII, around 20,000 tonnes, and just think, all it will cost us is some paper and ink.

Meanwhile gold continues to work for us in season and out of season, in good times and in bad. Our reserves have seen us through thick and thin, whether it's been the boom times under Reagan/Bush/Clinton or the misery index years of Jimmy Carter or the new depression years of Barack Obama. Our gold is still there, just like the flag. It hasn't rusted, shrunk in the rain, or even tarnished. Good as gold as they say. Things might be even better if we had more of it, but you've got to be thankful for your blessings, thankful for what you do have.

The truth is, even in the very worst of circumstances imaginable gold has performed miracles for people. A few well-placed gold coins not that long ago meant the difference between some of our fellow countrymen coming here or going to the gas chambers. Ask them and their progeny if escaping an apocalypse wasn't "just fine", even if they were penniless afterward.

No, the only suckers when it comes to gold have been those who let theirs go when misguided government came looking for it. Some of those babies confiscated in 1933 now fetch $300,000. The rest appreciated in value in their melted down form in the government's vault, but only 6600%. You could go to Harvard today with just 120 of those ounces. In the present banks and governments across the globe are finding the collateral gold provides rather more reliable than US Treasuries in a pinch, which is why they keep acquiring it. Evidently we haven't yet understood the message that this sends. 

It's true in a sense that gold is a rejection of government control, but only in the sense of its opposite, self-control, which is what in America is the unique basis of our form of government. It was an idea bequeathed to us by Protestantism, and also by Plato, both of which are unhappily out of favor. But seeking to control your own destiny, which is what many foreigners are doing by acquiring gold, is actually the sincerest form of flattery of what the United States used to stand for. Free from the control of a reserve currency, there's no telling what others in the world may accomplish without us. But under a universal currency, there's no telling what we could still accomplish together. 

The Tyrant Fears His Own: All His Life Long He Is Beset With Fear

"He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles."

-- Plato's Republic, Book IX

Is Tim Pawlenty "The Unnatural"?

There's a certain metaphysical quality to the guy. And we're not talking Platonic philosophy.

The New Republic tries to explain, here.

Spreading the Misery Around

Moreover, as we were saying before, [the tyrant] grows worse from having power:

he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless, more impious, than he was at first;

he is the purveyor and cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is that he is supremely miserable, and that he makes everybody else as miserable as himself.


-- Socrates, Republic of Plato, Book IX

A Simple Illustration Of Why Healthcare Is Not A Right

Because, quite simply, it's a contract. And if the provider doesn't agree to make a contract with you, no healthcare is provided. As in this case of yet another doctor who puts up a warning notice to his patients:

“If you voted for Obamacare, be aware these doors will close before it goes into effect.” The note is signed Joseph M. Scherzer M.D. and includes the following addendum: “****Unless Congress or the Courts repeal the BILL.”

People who insist that healthcare is a right would enslave another human being to make him or her provide it. If they really mean it then they ought to take intellectually promising children away from their mothers and fathers at an early age and raise and educate them to this end, just as Plato discussed long ago.

Funny how it's the Democrat Party which is so enthusiastic for a new form of slavery. Didn't they have something to do with it the last time? That went well.

The Daily Caller has the story and a picture here.